Who the Hell is this Phelan Guy?

  • Phelan ask what people do all day in the game? They generate twinks to generate gold to afford the stuff here. And because they are boring. The topic game is far wrong. People are not online anymore to play. Bring back the fun! that's your Job!

  • The shop software is the same for all our games. The switch to the standardized version was rather painful, but that makes the maintenance and the administration easier for us. That said, the RoM shop has definatly a lot of potential to be improved. Some minor changes have been made already, but when it comes to the shop, it is quite likely you will see changes soon. If you want to see some special Item back, let me know and I will try to get it in.

  • Phelan: A lot of things that were removed were "cosmetic".. like the other titles and costumes that used to be on sale.


    Have the sales team actually put up interesting sales. Now, the IS sales are always the same rotation.


    The other thing that was dropped was the puri sales during the 50% off sales.

  • Thats good to hear that some changes will be made. But "soon" we heard it too many times with 0 changes afterwards.


    As for items and the changes in regards, people expressed it over and over in all the years. You have teams of GM's that plays or played the game. They provided plenty of feedback from the old forum that was full with requests and yet all disregarded. Those requests haven`t changed.

  • You can make me ask others what they think you want and I can find out, or you could just tell me right here and now. The whole point of this AMA was interacting with you guys directly.

  • You can make me ask others what they think you want and I can find out, or you could just tell me right here and now. The whole point of this AMA was interacting with you guys directly.

    1. we want new content - of the small player base we already have (atleast on vidar server), many ppl stopped logging since nothing to do in game.


    2. Item Shop changes


    -bring back the ruby bonus on dias spent. This was reduced significantly (i get why, you guys gave us a wheel based on ruby - btw none asked for it - for years we supported to be removed completely) not to mention the prizes in it its rubbish.


    - start lowering prices in Item Shop - as i mentioned earlier in previous posts here .. the cost of it its too high (since you started playing around in game, you should do a quick math at how many dias are required just for +16 weapon / accessories, drillers etc - and i`m not mentioning going higher to 20+)


    - new promos (we currently have 4-5 that are on rotation for years) - even the current one for purified packages has been change to worse (previously big purified package was 300 dias, now is 380, and discount is taking effect once you buy in bulk - 5x pack (100 purified stones) - dias 1800+ - this makes no sense to spend that amount of dias since single purified stone is 15 dias on this promo - 15x 100 purified stones - 1500 dias = same amount of pfs as in the purchase of big package )


    - more permanent looks (that have been either removed, or not placed for sale in years)


    3. new festivals


    except for few(winter festival, crafting, anniversary), among those 10+ festivals that are currently, none cares about them. No change have been made here since years.


    4. Plussing rate


    after that is expenssive, you can spend few hundred $, and you end up with worse gear then you started with. I get you dont have to buy it, etc. But in order to be competitive is required. After all thats why anyone spends $ on the game anyway. The worse part of any jewels is the dropping rate. Either start lowering prices significantly, or remove the drop option. If they fail fine. But when i spend $, i dont expect to make my items worse.


    5. Events in game - i think i forgot the last time any GM+ did any events in the game.


    This is just a small list of things, but in my opinion the most important. These things have been requested over and over again, and the lack of changes in them, driven the most players away from the game.


    Make the changes above, and you`ll have a base of player happy with the game, without the feel of being robbed by GF at any corner, and too disapointed to even think spending $ on ROM.

  • You can make me ask others what they think you want and I can find out, or you could just tell me right here and now. The whole point of this AMA was interacting with you guys directly.


    I haven't been on the forums for quite some time, but I can recall some of what I had said about the item shop previously like 5, 6, 7 years ago (etc.)

    Cosmetic items and similar should all be in the Item Shop all the time, in my opinion. All or almost all mounts, pets, costumes, and titles should be in the Item Shop at this point. I can't see any reason to limit access to them and you only stand to gain additional money there, even though they're mostly 1-time purchases. Holiday-themed cosmetic items could be exclusive offers, but everything else should be available year round.

    Because this game was developed to be a tier-based progression system, prices on items required for gearing need to decrease over time rather than increase. Otherwise it gets to the point where with every expansion and cap raise and gear set, players must spend more and more money to access core content. It sounds great for revenue in theory, but at this point it's not practical for the game or for the players. By pricing out your consumers, you in turn make less money and the number of consumers being priced out has increased over time. What's worse, the consumers being priced out are able to play less and less of the game, so as a result they won't stick around.
    If the concern is finding the right price point balance for the company and for players, run some limited time offers as A/B tests where you can experiment with pricing on specific gear progression items without risking a big hit to current revenue. Then use the results from those tests to permanently update pricing on those items.

    As far as unique items for special offers, there's plenty of options there. Class expansion tickets were cool when those were released. Gathering/crafting expansions, same thing. I forget some of the other items in the database, but we're aware there's items that have never been offered even though we know they exist. Maybe look into some of those, something to improve the game experience that hasn't been offered before. (Can you feature the Serenstum recipe in the Item Shop? LOL Half-joking...)

    I wish I could remember more of what I've said over the years, but that's all I have off the top of my head. I'm sure others could do an even better post on this.

    EDIT: Adding this so you don't have to rely on me saying "back in the day, we all said..." This is one thread from Frogster era and at least the first 3 pages are available to read (out of 84 pages, yikes!)

    Checkmäte
    Warden / Warrior / Rogue / Scout / Mage / Druid

    Server: Aeterna (PVE)
    RIP Indigo (PVP)

    Edited once, last by Darli ().

  • First of all: Thanks, Phelan, for dealing with our questions and complaints and — most of the time — going into them. I have played RoM since the days of the early open beta, I am a priestess lvl 100 on server Vidar, and I still enjoy playing RoM, not very often, but again and again ;)


    As far as it concerns the questions: May the community hope for dia promos? And going deeper: May the community hope for the hope being fulfilled? Several weeks (four, five ...) without any promo seems too much to me. I must admit that I only buy dias from time to time on promotion, but according to one of your former statements, I'm sure that you've got sympathy for that slight miserliness; I'm a hard-working lady, and it's nothing but a noble act of self-defense ;)


    Wishing you all the best for your job at Gameforge, but mainly for your private life — by the way: Do you know that "Phelan" is part of the name of a St-Estèphe wine-growing estate called "Château Phélan Ségur", one of my favorite "Crus bourgeois" from Bordeaux?


    Best regards


    Tharmandor

  • If you want to see some special Item back, let me know and I will try to get it in.

    First of all - everything from the above permanently in the shop and regularly in a 50% promo

    Second - everything should be available in a number which i can choose (e.g. i want to by 17 gems of XYZ then there should be a field in the shop where i can write '17' ) or at least in typical numbers (e.g. typical number for charges would not be 1 but 10, 20, 50, 100,.. ).


    - costumes with preview

    - crafting-equip for your house with preview (bonus not look)

    - EP/TP-potions for quests and daylies

    - upgrading gems +16, +20, +30

    - chests (for diamonds)

    - fusis

    - special recipes (Laor,...)

    - special recipes for new servers (e.g. http://www.rom-welten.de/database/view.php?id=224776 - for more info ask Grimthar or SaitoHajime) for 1 dia

    - titles with preview

    - transformations-potions with attributes

    You can make me ask others what they think you want and I can find out, or you could just tell me right here and now. The whole point of this AMA was interacting with you guys directly.

    I would like honest answers to our questions.

    I would like to see real communication (which means every week or even daylie if necessary) with someone who really can answer questions or is in contact with somebody who can.

    I would like to see new content ( dungeon ) with reasonable challenge and good working events.

    I would like to see a new siege war map and siege war conditions (no slopes, no gras, nothing which can hinder my vision... for more detail ask one from the team; no tower tapping - just with all guards killed; no buffs on castle gates,...).

    I would like to see a clear code of conduct for all coms.

    I would like to see a faster IS which is well sorted.

    I would like to see bugfixes every month.

    I would like to see balancing patches (PvE and PvP).

    I would like to see diamonds back in auction.

    ...

    (should be enough for the beginning)



    Thanks for your work till now Phelan. I hope you get some things working here :)

  • Hello Phelan,


    I was so shocked with your answer here:


    You can make me ask others what they think you want and I can find out, or you could just tell me right here and now. The whole point of this AMA was interacting with you guys directly.

    and that's why I'm writing only now. Why was I shocked? Because you seemed not to be familiar with all community wishes; the wishes that were expressed on old forums during last few years; the wishes that were collected by GM's and forwarded to... Well, at that point of my thinking I realized that you are not the person responsible for the Item Shop marketing (as far as I understand) and so you might not know... But there should be someone in your company who is in charge as it comes to Item Shop. He (or she) should know. He was given our wishes and suggestions for the Item Shop all those years. Or maybe not? Or maybe all those threads in old forums were just an empty collections of empty writings? Or maybe GM's were that lazy and didn't do their work? Or maybe your company inner communication sucks?

  • can we have the storage chest (20 slot one) added to the shop for diamonds as well as rubies?

    i for the life of me can not figure out why it was decided to make them for rubies only.



    and please keep in mind our forum rules when posting here.

  • Quote

    and that's why I'm writing only now. Why was I shocked? Because you seemed not to be familiar with all community wishes; the wishes that were expressed on old forums during last few years; the wishes that were collected by GM's and forwarded to... Well, at that point of my thinking I realized that you are not the person responsible for the Item Shop marketing (as far as I understand) and so you might not know... But there should be someone in your company who is in charge as it comes to Item Shop. He (or she) should know. He was given our wishes and suggestions for the Item Shop all those years. Or maybe not? Or maybe all those threads in old forums were just an empty collections of empty writings? Or maybe GM's were that lazy and didn't do their work? Or maybe your company inner communication sucks?

    I am a bit surprised, that this shocked you. I was open about it from the very start.
    This is what I wrote in my first post:

    Quote

    My Runes of Magic knowlegde is rather limited, normaly I play all of our games before we decide to publish them, but this Game came to Gameforge through the merger of Frogster and Gameforge. When we launched it on steam I tested the installation, played around a bit and am now kind of hooked. I am a small level 23 warrior and play whenever my job and my family allow me to.

    However, most questions you will ask I will probably not be able to answer myself, but I will get you answers from people that know.

    .

    I was specifically asking about what Items in the shop were being missed, as this is something we have most control over it, and I might be doing something good.

    We run some 20 games, for each and everyone we have some experts that work together. The community managers here know the issues and they adress it with the productmanager and the game designers. The Team lLead of the RoM CMs will know, the big issues will be known to the Head of CM. Usually I am not involved there. I will be involved if a call has to be made if we spent >500 man days on project x or project y.

    The whole reason for my being here is to talk to you directly.

    I can poke around in our company and ask questions, make sure they get answered, bear that in mind when I meet someone from Runewaker, but I am not the one that makes decissions on details.

  • If you want to see some special Item back, let me know and I will try to get it in.

    Second - everything should be available in a number which i can choose (e.g. i want to by 17 gems of XYZ then there should be a field in the shop where i can write '17' ) or at least in typical numbers (e.g. typical number for charges would not be 1 but 10, 20, 50, 100,.. )

    I really like this concept and I think it's great you mentioned it. While I was playing over the weekend, I saw some players who had money and who wanted to purchase from the item shop said (in World) that they stopped when they realized they couldn't purchase the item they wanted in bulk. As long as the item itself is stackable, you should be able to buy any number of it. It's such a minor blocker, surely this would be quick and easy to address?

    Which brings me to another thought: is there any way to make consumable items more consistently stackable? What I mean is, some items stack to 1000, some stack to 99, some stack to 30, some don't stack at all. This might be a Runewaker request, but seems like consumable items should have a higher stack limit (maybe they can all stack to 1000, for example) and I can't see any reason why a consumable would not be stackable at all.
    Definitely not a high priority in my mind, but it would be super convenient.

    Checkmäte
    Warden / Warrior / Rogue / Scout / Mage / Druid

    Server: Aeterna (PVE)
    RIP Indigo (PVP)

  • Which brings me to another thought: is there any way to make consumable items more consistently stackable? What I mean is, some items stack to 1000, some stack to 99, some stack to 30, some don't stack at all. This might be a Runewaker request, but seems like consumable items should have a higher stack limit (maybe they can all stack to 1000, for example) and I can't see any reason why a consumable would not be stackable at all.
    Definitely not a high priority in my mind, but it would be super convenient.

    There was a report/Suggestion for that in the old board (threadID: 530168). It was forwarded back then but i don't know the current state of this specific suggestion.

    Du bist mit einer Entscheidung von mir nicht zufrieden? Kontaktiere meinen Superior SaitoHajime

  • How about restore/recover the old Databank? With the lost old forum new players over Steam have no source for Information about RoM. Even if only covers 2/3 of the Game, it will give many infos to the basics, classes, skills, npc, quest, crafting, runes and many more.


    Or you may take the old manual from the boxes update ist and give ist as a handout (pdf) to new player for more than the first steps. If you update the DB step by step, i think most is putting in new IDs, you will get a great database for all and many questions wil be covered with this.

    Lucy und andere Wanderer, Sammler und Rätselsucher aus alter Zeit.

  • @Phelan What server do you play on? Would very much like to gift you some plussing jewels & other stuff, so that you may get a little insight on our problems and endless complains.


    Also if you would like to learn a little more about the game itself, i would recommend you to check out my Runes of Magic channel on youtube, where i have for many years & still are promoting the game (For free), worth mentioning. Link in signature.

  • @Blueson: I play on Zikiehl, but no need to gift me anything, I need to feel the pain for myself. When it comes to videos.. I am too old for that. I prefer documents, things I can read. Not specifically on games, but on repair tutorials I will never understand the benefit of a video over a document ;)

  • Phalen just try plussing 1of your item to 20-30 i can told you is fun ....at start try to do on wings till you say you are low lvl pointless start whit weapon ^^

    after you can imagine what ingame player asking about succes/drop/failrate "hope you not get bored after 16fail in a row 21 to 30 but is happen "

    and please when you are done plussing your wings share forum how many dia coasted just on one item ...


    have fun and enjoy game this plussing system -(^_^)-